Untitled (Salamander 1), by Joseph Beuys, 1958 Hare's Blood, ferric chloride, fat, pencil (Kluse collection Munich) Beuys imagery prolific was his testing ground for new ideas. / by Mark Edwards

Beuys i am finding uses his art to preach to anyone that will pay attention, and he had plenty of followers. What interests me is the way he communicates to the world through the lexicon of drawing his medium in this regard being “any physical sign of mental activity that was preserved and presented in a two-dimensional format”. C. Haxthausen The Burlington magazine, Jan. 1994, vol. 136, No. 1090 pp.53-54. The use of these unconventional materials, felt, beeswax, grease, blood, pressed plants, stamping, staining, and other materials. Beuys used these mediums to create performances, like the iconic work, I Like America and America Likes Me 1974. I am looking to extract how I can utilize Beuys imagery drawings his delicate touch like the Untiled Salamander 1 with the juxtapose proposition of a one-man performance. His materialized forms the drawings of women and animals have a Palaeolithic sense to them at the same time being imagery of thought rather than pictorial. The threads I am sowing are of awareness to the earth and the bodily humanist spirit, this is an evolving enquiring process. However, the transporting of thought to hand to paper to sculpture is where my projects lead. Beuys’s use of what he termed Braukreuz, a reddish-brown pigment that he began using around 1960 signifies a ritual like color and substance at the same time it becomes a motif, I locate it with blood, femininity and a way of translating animal to earth. This leads me to join Beuys with my research Ana Mendieta and her untitled Self Portrait 1973 where blood drips down from her forehead over and into her nostrils lips and on to her white blouse, a performance, solo captured as a photograph.